And One For Your Dreams
by MaryWisdom
Summary: Damian encounters the last person he ever expected to meet in the afterlife: himself.


**AN:** Title from "You Only Live Twice" by Nancy Sinatra

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_**And One For Your Dreams**_

"You will just keep sulking here forever, won't you?"

Damian looked up into the boring, everlasting whiteness. While visitors were nothing new to him here, they had become scarce after each of them – his grandparents, his teachers, Grayson's parents, even Ace The Bathound – had realized that the dead 10-year-old Robin wanted nothing to do with any of them.

He had, however, never seen the tall old man in front of him. Bright blue eyes scowled down at him from a wrinkled, suntanned face. He had wiry grey hair, standing up from his head in all possible directions; irritatingly, his mouth was twitching in amusement. As he got closer, Damian noticed the deep frown-lines on his forehead and the few slight laugh-lines around his eyes.

Damian clenched his jaw and returned the scowl. "What concern is it to you?" he snarled. "Who are you anyway?"

Suddenly the man's thick brows lifted and his lips parted in a smirk.

"Is it so hard to tell?" he asked, and then, with a shake of his head, clicked his tongue. "Tt."

Stunned, Damian took a step back as the man changed and got younger and younger before his very eyes. His hair got darker until it was pitch-black; the wrinkles disappeared one after the other; muscles beefed up again and returned to the fitness-level of a much younger man. When he had reverted back to about 40, Damian's jaw dropped because the man looked like his father, but not quite: his skin was darker, the cheekbones higher and the eyes and brows more delicately arched, and the jaw was a little less square.  
But he was not done yet. He was still reverse-aging, smirk ever-present on his face. Sometime in what probably were his mid-twenties his hair briefly disappeared, shaved off for whatever reason Damian did not know. Contrastingly, as his stature got closer to the lean shape of a teenager, his hair was long enough to fall below his shoulders. There was an awkward goatie consisting of no more than a handful of stray hairs at around 15; the brief shadow of braces on bright white teeth; scars not fading, but glowing brighter before suddenly vanishing and leaving completely untouched skin behind. The stranger got smaller, all the time multiple clothes styles shifting with him: well-tailored suits became leather jackets and jeans and finally hoodies with marker doodles on them and bright Converse shoes decorated in a similar manner.

Finally the spectacle stopped, and Damian was staring at his very own face. The other boy was smiling straight back at him. To any spectator they would have looked like twins, only one was tense and angry (and maybe a little scared), while the other one was radiating an aura of peace and bliss.

"Wha-" Damian stammered, "How?! What are you?!"

The second boy rolled his eyes and huffed in mock-annoyance. "I am you of course! Or rather, I was you, many, many years ago." Damian gasped. The other boy's voice was exactly the same as his. The scowl his gasping earned him was hauntingly identical too.

"Time does not exist here," the second Damian said with a shrug, "and we died twice, so there are two of us here – you and I."

"Wait – I die twice?!" Damian asked with sudden, scarcely contained excitement. He was catching on quick. "Does that mean-?"

"Yes," his other self replied with a soft smile that Damian himself had not known he was capable of. "You will go back."

"When?" he wanted to know with hope in his voice, grabbing the other boy by his shoulders; it did not feel as weird as could be expected in this situation. "Tell me, when can I finally go back?"

The other Damian cocked his head in irritation. "Tt. I told you, time is irrelevant here! For all I know, you are already back!"

Damian let go and turned away disappointedly. He kicked at empty space in frustration. He was fed up with this place already and furious at the world. He hated the fact that he was dead and the shocking realization that he was mortal and had been beaten.  
The second boy was still cocking his head, watching him with amusement. He was annoying Damian. How could he ever be him? True, he did recognize the smirk and mockingly raised right eyebrow, but at the same time the other boy was lacking something essential, Damian felt.  
Or was Damian lacking something his older self had gained?

Damian glared at the boy over his shoulder. The other returned his angry gaze, only to suddenly crack up in laughter. He tried to hold back, but as soon as he had regained his composure and looked at Damian again, who was furious at this point, the grin came back, accompanied by huffs of natural laughs.

"Enough!" Damian shouted and stomped his foot. "You are undoubtedly lying and toying with me! I could never be you! How could I possibly become such an imbecile?!" The second boy caught himself and calmed his breath before turning serious and crossing his arms. "Life," he said before his scowl turned back into a smirk. Damian saw red and he lashed out. His other self saw the punch coming miles away and blocked Damian's arm with ease. All laughter was forgotten and Damian recognized his own determination and deliberation in the other boy's expression before he found himself on his behind on the strange imaginary ground of the afterlife.

"Tt," the second Damian clicked his tongue, unable to keep his lips from twitching up while he was eying the young Robin at his feet. "Life is what happens to us. You should try to enjoy it. It happens to be quite beautiful. It clears the mind," he explained while motioning to his own head to accentuate what he said. "And refrain from calling me – us – an imbecile," he added and before Damian's eyes he grew a few years older again, "I do have much more experience than you." He said it with such clear confidence, not stubbornness, but certainty, that Damian felt unable to doubt it.

"But what does my life become to turn me into _you_?" he inquired.

"Telling you would spoil all your fun," his future self smirked sarcastically. "You probably will not remember when you return, but why risk it?!"

The older one gave the child a thin smile and a short wink as he stretched out his hand to help him back up. Damian shook his head and instead moved into a more comfortable sitting position. He got a small nod as a reply and the other boy turned back to looking like his identical twin.

"How do you do that?" Damian wanted to know with an irritated frown.

"One of the actual perks of being dead," his other self answered, amusement strong in his voice. "You can do it too!"

Damian tried and concentrated hard, but he would not age or grow any taller. The second Damian watched him with a smile toying around his eyes. "Well, you can change to a younger version of yourself," he explained, when Damian grew visibly frustrated, and demonstrated it too by changing into 3-year-old Damian, dressed in his karategi and barely reaching to 10-year-old Damian's hip. "You can take any form you ever had up to the point you died." The now older boy watched with professional curiosity and tentatively tried getting younger. It tickled and suddenly he was in his 5-year-old body, smaller and less scarred, but also with an embarrassing gap where his two top front teeth should be, and he quickly returned to the oldest form he could take.

The toddler next to him grinned knowingly and conjured a katana out of thin air. Damian's eyes widened in surprise. The small child performed a series of complicated training moves with the weapon before smirking at him, "Yes, you are able to do that too – if you finally stopped sulking and just enjoyed your time in this place!"

Damian made a small red birdarang appear in his hand, but scowled at the little ninja. "Enjoy being dead?! Are you out of your mind?!"

"No, just out of my body," the kid shrugged, but turned more serious when he looked at Damian over his shoulder. "You caught a break from life. Enjoy it while it lasts." After a moment of silence he sighed. "No, it is not always going easy for us. We go through difficult times, but we pull through." While he spoke, he changed his age again and grew into his teenaged form; his long hair was tied back and he was wearing a simple jeans and white t-shirt combo with bright purple converse. "In the end it all comes together. It all works out. Believe me when I tell you," he said with an honest smile, "that there is not a single experience I would want to have missed!"

Damian was baffled. The longer he watched the other boy, the more he actually recognized himself in him; the slightly arrogant way he pushed his jaw forward; how his eyes keenly observed the person he was speaking to, secretly judging them; the way he drummed little tunes on his folded arms with the tips of his fingers. But there was this bewildering easiness with which his older self opened up, his heartfelt honesty, and unconcealed fondness of something Damian did not quite understand.

The teen watched Damian, his eyes reading every thought on the boy's mind. Another small smile stole its way on his lips and he explained silently, "I consider our life a success: I am glad to have lived; I am not sad to be dead."

Damian let the words sink in and felt them touch his mind and heart. Was this how one's life should end? Would he actually die without regrets? It seemed so disturbingly impossible to the little Robin.

"But if I will not remember any of this when I return," he finally said and his voice quivered slightly, "why are you telling me this? It will not change anything, will it?"

"Tt, I'm not looking to change a single thing!" the older Damian answered with condescending delight. "And I am not sure if you will be unable to remember anything – I was merely hoping to take that chip off your shoulder while you are here!"  
He shifted and the young Robin noticed how the older one was chewing the inside of his cheek and holding his breath while looking at him thoughtfully.

"However, there are three things I certainly hope you won't forget," 17-year-old Damian eventually said to his younger self, bending down and clutching the boy's shoulders and staring into his angry blue eyes intently, before wrapping his arms around him and pressing him hard against his chest in what was the most intense hug little Damian had ever received. He swayed a bit when the older he let go. "That was number one," the young man explained, both eyebrows raised urgently, "because you needed this. And do not even try to protest," he went on and cut Damian off, who had wanted to argue. "I do know what you need."

Young Damian shut his mouth grudgingly, to which his older self smirked and hit him over the head with his fist. "Ow!" Damian yelled, rubbing the back of his head. "What the hell was that for?!" – "For reasons," the teen answered, sounding way too satisfied. "And by the way, that was number two." The young boy grunted.

"And here is number three, Li'l Me," older Damian said, and the fond smile returned to his face with only a slight hint of wistfulness in his eyes. He raised his hand to touch the young boy's face softly, chuckling a little when he backed away at first. "Don't take everything so serious, little one! Love, and let yourself be loved and never be ashamed of it!" He paused, savoring the look on his younger face, and smiled again happily. "Like I said, it all works out! And it's all going to be well."

As he turned away, he began aging again. "If you are feeling up to it, you can come and meet everybody else. We are all here, together. Including two Jason Todds and an army of Grandfather, but they are mostly bearable."

Damian felt numb, and at the same time it was like there were fireworks going off inside his chest. He stood up, swaying. "So," he said and had to swallow hard before he could continue, "it's worth it?"

His late-twenties self spun around lightly, hair short and combed, and wearing a beautifully tailored dark suit with a light gray vest over a white shirt and a tie the same bright red as the rose in his buttonhole. He held out his left hand and took a moment to smile at the golden wedding band on his ring finger. "Yes," he said, "it is."

Young Damian watched the man, whose hair was turning grayer as he walked away. Then he stared at the red birdarang that was still in his hands and threw it into the distance.

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**AN:** This story feels like it is my heart and soul. Yup. That's probably the best way to put it. But please don't let this stop you from reviewing and pointing out anything weird/any mistakes.

If you want to see the wedding suit older!Damian was wearing, it's this one (yeah, I totally googled wedding suit and picked the one I liked best): .


End file.
